Newbury Stags started like a train against Petersfield with Josh Love (twice) and Henry Mills scoring. Having gifted Petersfield a consolation score, they went on to add a second half try through Jamie Mcintyre to run out as 24-5 victors.
Second up were Wallingford, and after a slow start (two Jamie Mcintyre tries in the first half), Newbury cut loose with Drysdale, Hobbs, Chris Lawrence, James Munger and David Clark all scoring to run out 39-0 winners. Pick of these has to be Rob Drysdale running half the length of the field (props don’t do that, do they?)
The Fullereans game would decide this pool. The Watford team took an uncompromising attitude to this match and a fairly brutal first-half was notably only for a yellow card to each side. Big tackling by Newbury kept Fullereans at bay in the second half, but a late try brought the visitors a deserved 5-0 victory.
Newbury’s quarter final was against a Warlingham team who did little on or off the field save moan about the referee. When one of their players repeatedly insulted the referee, he was justly red-carded. Against this backdrop, Newbury quietly went about their business. Mcintyre scored an exceptional try (converted). Warlingham got one back to make the final score look artificially close at 7-5.
The semi-final was against Winchester. Newbury scored early through Mcintyre but failed to convert, and when Winchester equalised, their conversion was enough to seal a place in the final against Fullerians (who subsequently won the tournament).
Newbury Bucks began against Devizes and conceded 2 fairly soft tries in the first 3 minutes. They tightened things up and early in the second period, Pete Burns ran half the length of the field to score. However they were unable to capitalise and conceded a third at the end to go down 17-5.
Next up the mighty Devonport Services, and a Bucks loss of 27-0 was perhaps to be expected. What was to their credit though was that, having conceded most of those points in the first period, they pretty much matched their opponents in the second.
Trojans were the Bucks’ last group match, and though Newbury frequently showed touches of class, they could not sustain the effort and the much larger Trojans team ran out 17-0 winners.
In the plate quarter final against Maidenhead, Bucks produced their best performance of the day, taking the lead after 1 minute with Dan Lawrence finishing off a real team try. Maidenhead looked relieved to get one back before half-time, and then scored a second just after the restart. Bucks raised their game for the final 5 minutes and with just a bit of luck could have equalised. It ended in defeat 10-5, and the result could so easily have gone the other way.
